DIY projects

So we don’t have a lot of interesting experiences to report since I was busy starting school this week. Luckily it went well. I have great classes and great professors, and I am looking forward to learning a lot this semester. Since not a ton happened, I thought I would backtrack to about 2 weeks ago and show you some of the progress Shawn and I made on the house.  I had been trying to figure out what to do with our master bedroom wall. The previous owners had nightstands that had been attached to the wall, so when we removed them there were large holes that needed to be covered.

Shawn and I liked the paint color in the room (and I REALLY did not want to paint the whole room) but I couldn’t find a matching color and wasn’t sure about what to do with the wall. Then it hit me. I thought we should paint a striped wall. I was a bit nervous broaching the subject with Shawn but he was on-board. He has been itching to do more home improvement projects and I have been a bit timid, so he happily got on-board with the idea. Over the course of an hour, I developed a plan for the wall. I didn’t want just one color, and I didn’t want just one size of stripes, so I took into account the size of the wall (93 inches) and developed a pattern. I wasn’t sure about it though so I created a document on the computer with the stripes drawn to scale in color so we could see the effect.

We thought it looked good, so we started the process, first with a shopping trip to Lowe’s. After that, it was time to tape. We started taping the next day, took a lunch break, and continued into the evening. It took us about 5 hours to tape that one wall!

We would measure up a certain number of inches depending on the color that was to go there, then use a level to create a straight line across the room. It was one of those cool laser levels (very useful). Then we would use painters tape to mark off the section that should not be painted. After we made it to the top of the wall, we needed to smooth down the tape. We used plastic putty knives to try and make it as flat as possible so that paint wouldn’t bleed through. We then painted perpendicular to the tape to again help avoid paint bleed.

The actual painting portion took maybe an hour and a half, and that included two coats. By that evening we got to take the tape off, and we were happy with the result. There are two small areas that need to be touched up because I got a little too excited when taking the tape down, but other than that it came out really well and we are happy with it.

And here is the final product! (You can see the headboard that is leaning against the bed in piece in this picture. We did get it put together and now the room is really complete--but I don't have a pic of that right now.) And I am the one who put those side lamps together. :-)